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Home Design

Transform Your Home: Expert Interior Design Tips to Create a Space You’ll Love

Date January 21, 2025 Category Home Design

Transform Your Home: Expert Interior Design Tips to Create a Space You’ll Love

Home renovation is more than a fresh coat of paint or rearranging furniture; it’s about crafting a space that fits your lifestyle, reflects your personality, and feels like home.

From working with an expert tiling company to partnering with Northside Developments, my recent project turned a dated house into a warm, functional, and stylish sanctuary.

This experience reinforced some timeless design principles, and today, I’m sharing practical tips that anyone can use to transform their home.

Start with a Vision, Not a Shopping List

Every renovation starts with a conversation. When I met the family for this project, their needs were clear. They wanted a home that felt welcoming, organized, and functional for their young children while still looking polished enough to host friends and family.

Instead of diving straight into picking colours or buying furniture, we started by imagining how each space would feel and function. The kitchen, for example, wasn’t just about cooking; it was the heart of the home, a place for everything from homework to late-night chats.

My advice: before you pick up a paintbrush, think about how you use your space.

What do you need it to do for you? How do you want it to feel? Your answers will shape every decision you make.

How to Create a Dog Friendly Landscape Design

Date February 19, 2024 Category Home Design

Dog-Friendly-Landscape-Design

Since dogs are a large part of many people’s lives, Perth landscapers must consider this when creating a landscape design. After all, dogs have needs, too. Making an outdoor space that does not consider their needs will mean that the dog is always getting into trouble for ruining the garden, or the owner is dissatisfied with the result of the dog’s natural activities. The way out of the dilemma is to plan a dog-friendly landscape design but one that is also person-friendly.

What do dogs like to do?

To do this, you have to remember – or find out – what is natural for a dog to do. Most people know dogs like to roll around on the grass, dig holes, and pee on the lawn. Many people don’t realize that dogs are highly territorial and like to run around the boundaries of their backyard to protect it. The trouble is that most outside areas include a narrow garden along the boundaries.

How Siri, Alexa, And Google Assistant Can Boost Your Household’s Oral Hygiene

Date May 4, 2022 Category Home Design, New Home

How Siri, Alexa, And Google Assistant Can Boost Your Household's Oral Hygiene

One thing that transforms how dentists work, and the sorts of dental treatments that are available to everyone, is technology. Examples include digital x-rays, laser treatments, and dental implants which are the modern alternative to having dentures. We are also at the stage where technology available to us at home can also positively impact our dental health.

We are not talking about DIY dentistry at home, but instead, technology that can help everyone care for our teeth and gums better than we have done so before. One prime example of this is home assistants. This is not someone turning up at your home to whiten your teeth but instead, devices which include Google Assistant, Siri from Apple, and Amazon’s Alexa.

If you have never heard of these or what they do, here is the briefest of explanations. They are small, portable devices that sit in any room at home to which you give voice commands. Depending on the voice command you give, your home assistant will answer or carry out a function.

If you wish to listen to your favourite music, tell your home assistant, and it will start playing it. Want to know what the traffic is like before you set off to work, your home assistant will tell you. Want current share prices, the latest news, or the weather, they can all be asked for vocally and your home assistant will give you the answer vocally too.

Why You Need an Elevator at your Residence?

Date June 30, 2021 Category Home Design

There was a time when the installation of elevators in the residence was either considered a luxury or a necessity for people with medical conditions. However, with the lowering price of elevators, people who want to improve their way of living are now commonly installing them in their homes during a home renovation. Many countries are even passing laws nowadays and making elevator installation mandatory in buildings with more than 3 stories.

On the whole, elevators can be quite useful and following are some of the reasons, from Lifts Perth, on why you need one at your residence too.

Eases Transportation
Other than making the commute easier and more independent for people with disabilities or any other medical condition, residential elevators can also be useful for moving furniture, luggage and other household items that might be difficult to carry down or up the stairs. It also ensures that the item you are carrying will not be damaged because of mishandling of any sort and that the transporting process will not put your safety at risk.

Advantages of Professional Landscape Design

Date October 17, 2020 Category Home Design

Professional-Landscape-Desi

Increasingly, people are including specially designed outdoor areas as part of their lifestyle enjoyment. Whether it is a fire pit surrounded by comfortable seating or a water feature that offers tranquillity and interest, your outdoor living area deserves a chance to look its best. There are many advantages to getting professionals to help you with your landscape design.

Professional landscapers do this for a living. They are always aware of the latest trends, so have the vision that you may lack to create a space that is uniquely suited to your tastes and lifestyle.
The professionals have undergone a great deal of training in their field. They have the qualifications to know what will work and what won’t. If you have a brainwave for your landscape design, professional landscapers can help you bring it to fruition.
Professionals are aware of the legalities. They know whether some aspects of the landscape design will require council permission and be able to organize this for you.

Epoxy Floor Coating Versus Polished Concrete

Date September 27, 2020 Category Home Design, Home Maintenance

If you need to, or are considering, renewing the flooring in a commercial building, two of the choices you have are epoxy floor coatings or polished concrete. If you have never used either before, then you might be unsure which, if either, of these, is going to be suitable.

In order to change that we are going to explain to you a few of the differences between epoxy floors and polished concrete floors, and by doing so, help you to see the advantages of each of them, so that you can consider which is right for you.

Epoxy Floor Coating

This has been one of the most popular floor coatings for many years, and it is possible that you have been in dozens of buildings that have epoxy floors in them. It is created by combining two different chemical materials, which have different functions. One is a resin, and the other is a hardener, and when they are mixed a chemical bond is created. This produces an extremely strong and durable floor coating.

Some of the advantages of epoxy floor coatings are as follows:

Durability: Epoxy floors are extremely durable and can withstand heavy foot flow and items being dropped on them. This makes them great for reception areas, and industrial units.

Top Tips For Choosing The Right Pool Fencing Team

Date April 17, 2019 Category Home Design

Choosing The Right Pool Fencing Team

Pool fencing is a complex skill that takes a lot of practice to master and requires the right tools and attitude to complete effectively. This means choosing carefully when picking a pool fencing team to build your next pool fence is essential. Otherwise, you might run into a wide range of unanticipated problems.

It’s essential to choose carefully when finding the right person or team for glass pool fencing. Glass fencing is complex and has to be done right.

With this in mind, Clear Az Glass Fencing has put together a list of their top tips for choosing the contractors to build your pool fence:

Choose A Reputable Team

The first thing you should do when looking for a pool fencing team is look at online reviews. Start with things like Facebook and Google reviews, and move to other websites as necessary. Make sure that you only look at reviews from past customers posted on third-party websites – otherwise, the team may be able to modify their reviews and choose to show only the most positive ones.

You can also get an idea of a fencing team’s reputation via word of mouth. Ask your friends and colleagues if they know of any good pool fencing teams, and take their advice if they do.

7 Benefits of Hiring Professional Landscape Designer

Date October 23, 2017 Category Home Design

Landscape Designer

When planning and designing your landscaping it’s important to hire an expert instead of trying to self-create the features. This is because landscaping entails a unique balance of magnifying the natural features surrounding your house to create an attractive and functional environment.

This affair by itself is a complexity that may not be easy to entangle. This is why it’s easy to consider the following benefits of hiring a professional landscaper.

Idea generation

Good landscape designers have the expertise and experience to develop loads of ideas. Ideas formulation is a quality of human but in most cases to be abundant with ideas is an innate quality of a landscape designer. They are able to spin an idea and generate improved versions using their past experience and unique talent.

Site analysis

Every yard or garden is unique and belongs to a larger ecosystem. A landscape designer is bestowed with the right skills to comprehend the macrocosm that determines all the strokes of the design they create. They have the ability to interpret all the natural elements the influence the design within the area of focus.

Engineered Wooden Flooring

Date June 19, 2017 Category Home Design

Wooden Flooring

When you talk about engineered timber flooring, some people get that glazed look on their face because the word ‘engineered’ has appeared in the sentence. “Oh, nothing as complicated as that, please.” So that means this type of flooring might go under the radar when a person is looking to refit their floors.

Why? Because it falls between the other, probably better-known options, laminate flooring and hardwood timber flooring. Engineered flooring is made completely from timber. The appearance you like so much is only in the few millimeters of the overall thickness, a bit like laminate flooring.

Engineered flooring is made up of layers, something like a hardwood layer of oak or even jarrah, just a few millimeters thick, which is affixed to a base of strong plywood.

Very Popular

Engineered timber flooring is the best of both worlds and it has risen in popularity over the years. Even though the original timber, be it oak or blackbutt, is as little as 2mm thick, the look and finish is identical to that of a floor laid with solid oak or blackbutt.

How to Add Cottage Charm to a Modern Kitchen Design

Date November 24, 2016 Category Home Design

Cottage-Modern-Kitchen

If you ask Colray Cabinets, the modern kitchen is known for its sleek, neutral colours and minimalist look. If you have a kitchen design like that, but are not totally happy with it, try adding some cottage kitchen elements to it. They can mix and merge with what is already there, offering workspace that is user friendly and functional, but still pretty in that warm, charming way the cottages of yesteryear had.

So how can you add the look and feel of a country cottage kitchen to your modern one? Here are some tips.

4 Ways Aluminium Doors can Enhance Your home

Date September 3, 2016 Category Home Design

Aluminium-Doors

Once, windows and glass doors had to be framed in timber, which had to be kept painted to prevent warping and twisting. Timber frames made the doors much heavier so design and use was limited. These days there are aluminium frames which are amazingly light, yet strong enough to hold that glass in place. They don’t have to be painted because the colour is already there. The lighter frames meant that doors especially, can be used in ways that were once impossible. Here are four ways in which aluminium doors can enhance your home.

You can remove a whole wall and replace it with bi-fold aluminium framed glass doors. This allows the outside to be easily accessed, gives more natural lighting and enhances your living space. Having breakfast or supper on a warm spring day with all the kitchen doors opened into the garden or the veranda has to be much more enjoyable than sweltering in a closed up room. It’s like enjoying the outdoors without having to go out there.

7 Advantages of Glass Fencing for Your Pool

Date June 1, 2016 Category Home Design

glass-fencing

Everyone who has employed a Sydney pool builder to build themselves a nice pool for their home knows that it is essential to have a safety fence around it so that toddlers and children cannot fall in and drown when you are not watching. However, traditional pool fencing has relied on steel rods to perform the task of keeping children out where they are safe. Such fencing may do a good job, but it is less than attractive and can make a small space look and feel even smaller. That is where glass fencing comes into its own. Here are some of the other advantages you will find with glass pool fencing.

It is aesthetically pleasing. Frameless glass pool fencing means that you can see right through it with nothing to spoil the view or cut your yard in half. Since you can see through it, you can keep an eye on the children without having to sit right by the pool.
The spigots that contain the glass sheeting and keep it upright can be of stainless steel or anodised aluminium. They are firmly attached to the concrete base and quite short so they are not intrusive to look at.

7 Advantages of Colorbond Roofing for Your Home

Date March 21, 2016 Category Home Design

Colorbond-Roofing

These days, more than ever before, Colorbond roofing is a popular choice for people building homes, whether they are upmarket homes or more affordable ones. Once, the roof of choice was tiles, with corrugated iron being left for sheds and commercial buildings. But once Colorbond arrived with its large colour range and ease of transport builders soon found many other advantages of using this material for their homes.

While the simple silver colour of yesterday’s corrugated iron did not suit brick walls, the large colour range of Colorbond roofing means that there is a colour to suit every style and type of home and every building material. In fact, many people are turning to darker coloured roofs that seem to merge into their city surroundings or provide a foil for the surrounding countryside. The beautiful colours in Colorbond roofing have been derived from the many elements of the Australian countryside. Mountain mist, sea-spray, soil colours, eucalypts, rocks and even the sky have all played a part in the colour range.

Limestone As A Construction Material In Building Industry

Date November 9, 2015 Category Home Design

Limestone-As-A-Construction

Limestone has a wide variety of uses in home construction based on the numerous products into which it can be processed. Consultants who provide building and construction advice have recommended it over and above, it has been used in the building and construction industry for walls and floors on buildings. It can sometimes be hard to find the right material suppliers, searching for “building supplies near me” can help open up your options. This is in various ways as follows:

Limestone blocks used in building of structures such as houses
Stone cladding on walls – supplied by companies such as Meteor Stone
Retaining walls
Floor paving and tiles

Limestone blocks used in building structures
Limestone is well used for construction of both strong and durable structures, proven by some of the structures found in world history.

Limestone is first shaped into large limestone blocks then used as construction stone. It can also be sized into brick-sized blocks which are much smaller generally in physical size.

Some of the icons of world architecture such as the great pyramids of Egypt have been constructed purely out of limestone. The reasons why limestone is preferred for this specific use is:

5 Tips for Choosing Security Fencing

Date May 16, 2015 Category Home Design, New Home

Security-Fencing

When it comes to security fencing, most people think in terms of keeping people out, but in fact keeping people or animals in is often more essential. When you think what would happen if your toddler or your doggie friend got out onto the street, you will soon see the need for the kind of fencing that will keep them safe. So how do you choose this kind of fencing?

The first thing to do before choosing any kind of fence is to check with the council to see if there are any rules and regulations about fencing in your suburb. It could well be that certain kinds of fencing are required, in which case you won’t have much of a choice.
If you do have a choice you will need to think whether privacy is also a requirement. Steel cladding fencing – or any kind of fencing that cannot be seen through – is the best for privacy. It can keep your dog from seeing another dog over the fence and barking at it all day long. And it can keep nosy neighbours from seeing what you are doing, while still keeping your animals and children safely contained.

Why Designer Garden Pots are Essential for a Balcony

Date June 3, 2013 Category Home Design

Designer-Garden-Pots-for-Balcony

There are several reasons why designer garden pots are essential for a balcony. When you have pot plants outside on the ground level there are many elements apart from the actual pots that are visually attractive; the lawn or pavers they are standing on and the surrounding garden with its shrubbery and other design elements.

But when pots are on a balcony, much of that is missing. Any view is too distant to impact the visual aspect of the pot and so there is only the floor and walls, along with any other pots or ornaments you have on display. So the pot and the plant in it make the main visual impact statement. In this case it is important to have a pot that looks really attractive.

They offer colour

Designer garden pots tick the boxes for being visually attractive since they come in an array of colours not usually found in common nursery pots. Their shape is more unusual as well, which offers another visually appealing element overall, especially when you have chosen the shape of the plant to enhance the shape of the pot. You could have a mounding plant in an oval pot, or perhaps grow one with upright, sword-shaped leaves for contrast.

6 Tips to Make the Most of Your Security Fencing

Date April 27, 2013 Category Home Design

Security-Fencing

When you have security fencing installed on your property it is usually in the hopes of keeping intruders out, thus limiting loss and damage. To make the most of your security fencing you need to think like a potential burglar. What they look for is a property that they can get into and out of quickly and unseen. So take a look at your fencing and how it is set up and see if it is really as secure as you could make it, especially if no one is at home all day long. Here are some tips to help you.

Since intruders don’t want to be seen they often choose a property with plenty of shrubbery for them to hide in. If your grounds are covered in trees or shrubs, consider cutting some of them down to provide a clear view from the fence to the house or commercial building.
Are there trees overhanging the fence? Low branches can help a resourceful intruder climb your fence. In addition, branches can fall from higher trees with enough force to smash a section of fence. Remember, there doesn’t have to be a storm or strong wind; sometimes branches suddenly fall down on a still night.

Fibreglass vs. Concrete for Swimming Pools

Date July 17, 2011 Category Home Design

Fibreglass-vs.-Concrete-swimming-pool

Once you have made the decision to have a swimming pool installed on your property there are several factors to take into account and one of the most important ones is what it will be made from; fibreglass or concrete. Here is a breakdown of each to help you decide which one is best for you.

The concrete advantage

Concrete swimming pools have several advantages over fibreglass, the main one being that every part of it can be customised. Shape, size, design, colour and accessories can all be unique because the construction is done onsite, not in the factory. This allows you to put a pool in a corner of any shape and size; it can even be a triangle if that suits the position best. You can have steps and levels in the pool however you want them and you can add lighting and even spa jets to enhance usage.

Concrete lasts a lot longer than fibreglass and is lower in maintenance. When a concrete pool is installed properly there will be no staining at the seams from groundwater.